Busy Mom had a great take on 25 Skills Every Man Should Know.

Since we are smack dab in the middle of the Terrible Twos, I thought I’d share 25 Skills Every Toddler Should Know (But Their Parents Wish They Didn’t:)

1. Run away from their parents in public. (Bonus points if in a busy parking lot.)

3. Squirm their way out of a buckled car seat or stroller.

4. Do the car seat arch the back maneuver.

5. Break into “child-proofed” cabinets.

6. Color on floors, walls, and older siblings’ Barbies.

7. Scream like a banshee. (Bonus points if in public!)

8. Loudly announce “I go pee pee” or “I go poo poo” in church.

9. Locate the nearest pile of dog poo. (Bonus points if fresh!)

10. Locate the buried tampon in mommy’s purse.

11. Request to go potty at the grocery store when at the furthest point from the restroom.

12. Tear all the flaps out of lift-the-flap books.

13. Loudly proclaim “I DO IT!”

14. Become well versed in “NO.”

15. Carry on imaginary phone conversations with the zeal of a televangelist.

16. Turn an ordinary couch into a trampoline.

17. Poop five seconds before heading out the door.

18. Become sick when their parents plan a date night.

19. Use all the toilet paper in one sitting.

20. Find the remote.

21. Lose the remote.

22. Put the fear of God into the family pets.

23. Wash a doll’s hair in the toilet.

24. Blow kisses with wild abandon.

25. Look adorable at just the right moment.

26. Destroy your brain cells, causing you to skip over items in lists.

So what are some of your “twoisms?”

Dear Mother Who Signed Her Son Up for Free Swim Lessons, Even Though He Knew How to Swim:

It was clear that you thought it was adorable that your son was swimming like a porpoise on crack, but it was incredibly distracting, not to mention rude, to the instructors and the three kids who really were trying to learn to swim.

Dear Dad in the Family Locker Room Who Was Irate Because I Accidentally Cut Him Off at the Swimsuit Water Extractor Gadget:

Get over it! It was an accident! I apologized and you responded by saying nothing. Hmmmm. Either you did not understand me or you are just plain rude.

Dear Angsty Teenage Boy Wearing Street Clothes on the Elliptical Machine:

Dude, I know your skin has not seen the light of day in three years, but you’ll sweat a lot less if you put on some lightweight workout clothes instead of ankle length denim shorts and an XXXL shirt.

Thanks,

Blonde Mom

Pretty Maids All in a Row, originally uploaded by blondemom.

Cinderella never looked so cute.

Miss C had her first soccer game of the season Saturday bright and early at 8 a.m. (We won…yea!)

The hubby was very sick Friday night and so was Miss A. The hubby dealt with the weekend butt kicking crud by taking some nighttime cold medicine and passing out. Miss A dealt with illness by waking me up and demanding to watch back-to-back episodes of Diego at 3 a.m.

Thank God for Tivo!

I couldn’t really go back to sleep after her marathon Diego session (perhaps she is cramming for some unbeknownst to me Spanish final at daycare?) although Miss A finally agreed to be carted to back to bed about 5:30 a.m.

Miss C and I headed for the soccer field at 7:45. Yawn.

Thank God for undereye concealer!

I sat down on my fold out chair on the sidelines and thought to myself that what I really needed was a caffeine patch Starbucks fairy to magically appear by my side and a chair with a heated seat, seeing as the chilled Gatorade I’d packed suddenly seemed very unappealing in the 59 degree weather.

Perhaps what I needed was a combo caffeine patch/heated seat sidelines chair! Now that would be a nifty soccer mom invention. But then that would mean I would somehow have to absorb the caffeine through my bottom while sitting in the chair. Obviously that wouldn’t work.

Thank God for coffee!

Besides 99 percent of the satisfaction of attaining a caffeine buzz via coffee is the taste, the warmth, and the aroma. And you just can’t get that through a caffeine butt patch.

SlackerMommy has an awesome post and about debratting your kids and how the fine line between being your child’s parent and friend has become blurred. Hence, 13-year-olds have a busier social calendar than their parents, no kids hold steady part-time jobs any more, and parents are forking over $300 for Hannah Montana tickets and afternoon mani/pedi treatments for girls who don’t even have their driver’s licenses. The hubby and I have already talked about how we want our girls to help pay for their own vehicles some day. Let’s hope we stick to our parenting guns! We both worked when we were teenagers (I blogged about my humbling fast food experience at Wendy’s where I was a hot mess in polyster navy blue pants.) The hubby bagged groceries at Piggly Wiggly, delivered Domino’s pizza, and was the cute lifeguard at our small town country club.

A hilarious sibling rivalry video. (Hat Tip, Love Shak, Baby.)

This iced chai recipe on How about orange… sounds delicious.

I didn’t realize Talbots has an online kids’ outlet. (Hat tip: Like Merchant Ships)

I posted over at the Colorado Grand Junction this week about two studies that looked at the negative effects of TV and so-called educational DVDs for babies. I also admit that Dora is practically family as she babysits the girls almost every weekday morning. Muchas gracias Dora!

White Trash Mom has an awesome Not Ready for Mom Jeans list on This Next. I so need this Mother on the Edge t-shirt. My wardrobe has morphed into a sea of indistinguishable khaki and dear Lord I actually wore soccer earrings to Miss C’s game this morning. But we won the game, so I consider them my lucky soccer mom earrings now.

And to think, I’d forgotten all about Rick Astley.

Two out of four members of the Blonde Mom Blog household have colds, not including me, so I’m bathing in hand sanitizer and downing Gatorade.

Have a great weekend!

I read on Back in Skinny Jeans that Martha is on FaceBook.

And if you have to ask who I mean by Martha? You’re dead to me.

I became fairly giddy over the prospect of adding Martha to my FaceBook friends! I’ve had a FaceBook account for over a month but I have been intimidated by all the bells and whistles and never did much beyond signing up. But then the thought of being a cyber buddy with Martha Stewart prompted me to log on to my account and update my profile! I added some favorite songs! I added a Happy Hour widget! Should I send Martha a virtual martini? Would she share tips with me on how to organize Miss C’s school paper work? How does she keep her home free of dog hair? We all know Martha loves her dogs. Wait, do her dogs have their own personal assistants?

Martha and I go way back. My mother had one of Martha Stewart’s first entertaining books in hardcover in the early 1980s. Not that my my mother, someone who knows how to channel her inner Martha, needed the book. My mom was into organic gardening and canning fresh vegetables and making homemade bread years before it was in vogue. She bottle fed calves and raised baby chicks on our farm and today, even though she lives in the city, her backyard garden has the most incredible flowers you’ve ever seen and she’s only been in her new house since May. You could eat off my mother’s floors. Heck, she could serve hors d’oeuvres out of her bathtub. Of course my mom also hasn’t worked outside her home in years.

My mother raised me and my siblings to have an appreciation for the fine things in life, whether it be beautiful English bone china or Waterford crystal, polished silver, cloth napkins for every day and not just special occasions, crisp laundered tablecloths, and fine antiques.

There is a part of me who longs to embrace my inner Martha, but I need the accelerated Martha program for busy housewives. I need a Martha cheat sheet. I don’t have time to make homemade marshmallows! I’m busy people! I serve my kids jumbo biscuits from a can and I would rather throw a wrinkled shirt in the dryer with a damp towel than fire up my iron. Actually I’d rather do just about anything than iron, whereas my mother loves nothing more than a stack of ironing to tackle.

I do regularly use cloth napkins at home, so that’s a start. And, hey, I decorate Miss C’s brown paper sacks for afternoon snack time at school! Only I use Little Mermaid stickers from the Dollar Tree. And I’m not sure Martha would ever step foot into a Dollar Tree. It’s much too bourgeois.

A closet Martha Wanna Be must improvise. Besides, the Dollar Tree is where I get all my Christmas stocking stuffer loot. Well, at least the stuff I don’t count on lasting for more than three days. Just don’t tell Martha that I frequent the Dollar Tree, or else she might revoke my FaceBook friendship.

You know you live in Nashville when you see wild turkeys at the soccer practice field and see a country music video shoot on the way home from practice. This is where I fantasize about inventing a new career for myself as a video location scout. I grew up in the boonies and could lead them to a real farm, not a park two miles from Starbucks.

Coming down from a pain medication high on Sunday led me to do crazy things. I cleaned my desk and shredded tons of paperwork. I found a photo brag book that I thought I’d lost over a year ago. And here all this time I thought someone was carrying around pictures of my girls and claiming that they were theirs.

Speaking of paperwork, we are only in week four of kindergarten and oh my GOOD LORD the paperwork. I’ve never seen so much homework, take home work, not to mention newsletters, teacher letters, PTO letters, volunteer request forms, calendars, lunch schedules, etc. And now if I can only beat down my inner pack rat who feels guilty about throwing away any of my precious daughter’s schoolwork. Because, you know, she could be president some day and they might need her first phonics worksheets for the archives.

For about 30 seconds I confused my electric knife with my mixer while starting to make Bailey’s birthday cake. I couldn’t quite figure out why the beaters were not going into the base. And then I realized that in ten years of wedded bliss, I have never gotten my Martha Stewart on with the electric knife. Do people actually use electric knives?

I’m researching a Mother’s Day Out program as opposed to full-time daycare for Miss A since I am usually home by 1 Monday through Thursday now. Rumor has it mothers camp out in their minivans at 4 a.m. to get a slot. Things could get ugly. We all know moms can whip out their can of mama whoop ass over anything related to child care. This is a church-based program, though, so no one could get too competitive, could they? I did some name dropping when I e-mailed the director Monday. I have no shame.

Is anyone else tired of reading about how “bad” Britney Spears looked on the VMAs? I didn’t watch the VMAs, but from the photos I’ve seen her post-babies/nasty divorce/Cheetos with a Red Bull chaser physique doesn’t look that bad, does it? So she’s not Posh Spice or Paris Hilton thin, but who is? It took guts to put on her best underwear and fishnet hose to dance and lip sync on live TV, especially with Sarah Silverman in the wings waiting to crack a vagina joke. And, as scary as it is for me to admit, I’m on Kanye West’s side as far as MTV exploiting Britney. MTV has the class of a Jello midget wrestling match at a state fair midway.

I’m very late in posting this today, but in honor of all the men and women who lost their lives during the horrific tragedies of September 11, I wanted to repost a tribute I wrote last year memorializing New York firefighter Lt. Peter L. Freund.

Lt. Peter L. Freund was a native New Yorker, husband, and father of four who put his life on the line for others every week as a firefighter in New York City. He had decided to change career paths and become a high school math teacher, but was killed in the line of duty September 11. A letter from upstate Westtown High School accepting his application arrived the week after the attacks of Sept. 11. In the words of his wife, Robin, “He always said he never wanted to work one tour too many.” He was going to have a new life of summer vacations and regular schedules for him and his family, according to this Chicago Tribune article.

I’m honoring Peter today as part of D. Challener Roe’s 2,996 tribute to honor the victims of 9/11. Peter was from Westtown, N.Y. and was 45 years old. He was stationed in the Engine 55 firehouse and killed in the North Tower.

This morning Peter’s sister, Barbara Salvadore, along with his brother, Charles “Chip” Freund; Barbara’s husband, Peter Salvadore; and his brother, Walter, will arrive in Washington, D.C., along with 100 other cyclists in the Tour de Force memorial ride. They began their memorial ride Friday, September 8.

The following is an excerpt from a newspaper article that appeared in the Record Online, the online version of the Times Herald-Record, serving New York’s Hudson Valley and the Catskills.

“This is really nothing compared to what they went through,” Barbara, 48, said of her brother, as well as her cousin, Firefighter Timothy McSweeney, who also died in the Sept. 11 attacks. In at least one day, they will ride almost 100 miles and Barbara knows the trip will take its toll. She has pictures stuck to her handlebars facing her…smiling pictures of Pete and Tim. If the roles were reversed, she said, her brother would be the first on a bike to ride for her.

Peter grew up on Staten Island. He met his wife, Robin, when he was a high school football player and she was a cheerleader. Life took them in different directions until 1987 when they married. Peter left behind four children: Peter, 9, Dori, 13, Julie, 11, as well as stepson Ronald Coronato, 24.

Serving the public was in Freund’s blood, according to a Newsday article I read about him. His late mother, Doris, was a nurse, his late father, Charles, was a New York City sheriff and his cousin, Timothy McSweeney of Ladder Co. 3 in Manhattan, died in the attacks of Sept. 11.

The Freunds had decided to raise their family in the farm country of upstate New York. Because Peter did 24-hour “tours,” he didn’t mind the nearly two-hour-commute to New York City that he made twice weekly. “When he was away, we’d talk on the phone at night so he could keep up with what the kids were doing,” said his wife, Robin. Peter had a busy schedule but he enjoyed taking the time to devote to coaching his kids’ softball, baseball and football teams. He had a passion for astronomy and had even built a backyard observatory where he could do some stargazing and listen to his favorite music by the Grateful Dead.

I salute Peter and his dedication and service to our country, along with the other victims of Sept. 11. I hope you will visit D. Challener Roe’s 2,996 tribute website and read the other memorials.